Thanks for taking it unseriously. I didn’t want to have to sift through one of your convoluted, misrepresentations anyways.
You got my points. That’s all that matters. I could care less how you would “thoughtfully reply”.

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Row row row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily Merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream!

On an individual level, if you are in debt, you should decrease your spending and/or increase your income. Simple and obvious.

In terms of government debt, Reagonomics turns part of this simple equation on its head by asserting that decreasing government income (i.e., lowering taxes) will decrease debt by causing investment that will grow the economy. If this is true, then, it makes just as much sense, or more, to assert that government spending will stimulate and/or grow the economy. I say, “or more”, because money spent on programs such as food supplementation, will immediately go back into the economy. (And yes the growth in SNAPS was very likely one of the factors aiding in recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. And it had the added benefit of helping some poor people be less hungry.) Lowering taxes will only stimulate economic growth IF it is immediately spent or IF it is invested in something productive.

In Reagan’s years, coming out of a recession, the economy WAS stimulated. He lowered high rates of taxes, significantly. (BTW, there is evidence that lowering taxes has a much less stimulating effect on the economy if taxes paid are not already prohibitively high, as they were when Reagan took office.) But Reagan also increased spending. (What? Tea Partiers take note. Reagan increased spending!) The economy was positively effected, during the Reagan years, but the national debt per capita increased by a far greater percentage than any other President since and including Carter. (What? Tea Partiers take note. Reagan increased the national debt, per capita, by over 188%!) By contrast, Obama’s increase in the national debt per capita, after inheriting and reversing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, will likely come out to be around 120% or less (projecting average annual increases so far during his term out to the full 8 years).

So it seems to me that Obamanomics are superior to Reagonomics. BTW, Obama has had to fight every step of the way against a tea partisan Congress whose number one priority seems to be insuring that Obama fails. Reagan, by contrast had the support of many Southern Democrats in Congress.

As a fabrication of our own consciousness, our assignations of meaning are no less “real”, but since humans and the fabrications of our consciousness are routinely fraught with error, it makes sense, to me, to, sometimes, question such fabrications.

Reagan’s election sickened me when it happened because I saw who was behind it and what they were up to. Sure enough, more than three decades later, the government is all but disabled, while a few gigantic corporations have consolidated their wealth, power and control not just nationally but globally. To boot, we’ve done nothing to address our long-term needs anywhere doing so would have interfered with corporate bottom lines, so we’ve bled trillions upon trillions of dollars effectively subsidizing big oil, big pharma, etc., and damaging our natural environment in the process. Meanwhile, the American people, who could rein this in, are divided, with a substantial segment of them convinced that Reagan’s words were holy writ and the government - which is the only means to have to rein this in - is the problem. It’s as though they don’t even see how their incomes have stagnated while those of a few on top have soared. How or why they insist on overlooking that bagatelle is completely beyond me; it’s front and center every time they look at their own finances. I’d say they are victims of a right wing propaganda machine, except that the real victims are those of us who see what is going on, call the right wing on it but can’t convince our Tea-Party friends and relatives that they’re being manipulated. In a sense, they are victims but in a truer sense they are willing participants in their own economic decline - and ours - and the destruction of individuality, freedom and democratic ideals. And then they tell us that we are the threats to freedom. One way or another, this will come crashing down. If we are to be the first in a long string of great powers to avoid a major decline, several major changes must take place; right now I see no evidence of any of them.

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I cannot in good conscience support CFI under the current leadership. I am here in dissent and in support of a Humanism that honors and respects everyone.

On an individual level, if you are in debt, you should decrease your spending and/or increase your income. Simple and obvious.

In terms of government debt, Reagonomics turns part of this simple equation on its head by asserting that decreasing government income (i.e., lowering taxes) will decrease debt by causing investment that will grow the economy. If this is true, then, it makes just as much sense, or more, to assert that government spending will stimulate and/or grow the economy.

The latter is often part of the Keynesian argument, but you’re leaving out Reagan’s emphasis on cutting government spending (it was emphasized ideologically but was not put fully into effect because of Cold War spending and a less-than-fully-cooperative Congress (including a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives). The Reagan critique of government spending is that it is less effectively directed toward growth than private sector spending, and the key to this concept is the understanding that innovation is the economic spark that drives the economy. Food stamps don’t prompt much innovation, unless we count inventing new ways to scam the system.

I say, “or more”, because money spent on programs such as food supplementation, will immediately go back into the economy.

And that’s explicitly the Keynesian argument, but even Keynes would admit that such spending is effective for short-term stimulus, not long-term stimulus. Just spending gobs of money on food stamps year after year in a effort to constantly stimulate the economy isn’t likely to work.

(And yes the growth in SNAPS was very likely one of the factors aiding in recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

This recession was comparable to the recession Reagan faced in the early 1980s, with the biggest difference being the rapid recovery then (despite the need to start by using Fed policy to stem inflation) compared to the glacial recovery we’re currently experiencing.

And it had the added benefit of helping some poor people be less hungry.) Lowering taxes will only stimulate economic growth IF it is immediately spent or IF it is invested in something productive.

That’s assuming that innovation isn’t a key aspect of economic growth. It’s a bad idea to mix the concept of short-term Keynesian stimulus with what is beneficial for the economy generally. Keynesian policies are intended to smooth the bumps of the business cycle, but they exact a price in growth. You can see that clearly by comparing GDP numbers between the U.S. and Europe over the past 40 years. European socialist countries have generally higher unemployment rates and lower GDP. Surprise, surprise, now that Obama has us emulating the European model more closely we’re seeing higher unemployment and lower GDP.

In Reagan’s years, coming out of a recession, the economy WAS stimulated. He lowered high rates of taxes, significantly. (BTW, there is evidence that lowering taxes has a much less stimulating effect on the economy if taxes paid are not already prohibitively high, as they were when Reagan took office.) But Reagan also increased spending. (What? Tea Partiers take note. Reagan increased spending!)

Reagan wanted higher spending on defense but wanted cuts to other spending. He faced plenty of opposition in Congress. You’re missing a key part of the story, though it’s fair to note the overall increased spending in terms of evaluating the effect of Reagan’s policies on the economy.

The economy was positively effected, during the Reagan years, but the national debt per capita increased by a far greater percentage than any other President since and including Carter. (What? Tea Partiers take note. Reagan increased the national debt, per capita, by over 188%!) By contrast, Obama’s increase in the national debt per capita, after inheriting and reversing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, will likely come out to be around 120% or less (projecting average annual increases so far during his term out to the full 8 years).

Percent of GDP tells the story more accurately when falling wages are in play. A rise in per capita debt is much harder to deal with when wages fall. Most tellingly, your version of events overlooks the fact that both deficit and debt as a percentage of GDP are outside the levels the EU finds acceptable among its member nations. That was true for the U.S. during WW2. And not since until the Obama presidency.

BTW, Obama has had to fight every step of the way against a tea partisan Congress whose number one priority seems to be insuring that Obama fails. Reagan, by contrast had the support of many Southern Democrats in Congress.

No, let’s be real. Obama had the rare advantage of a unified government for his first two years, including a filibuster-proof Senate majority for much of that time. He could get anything passed he wanted, and he wanted health care reform. The key opposition to that came from his own party. Yes, Reagan had support from Democrats, and not just Southern Democrats. He had that support because he actively compromised with Democrats. He worked at it. It was under Reagan that Social Security was reformed, for example. That was a bipartisan effort. Reagan worked at bipartisanship. The current president appears to relish the opportunity to publicly disparage his opposition. He exhibits none of Reagan’s charm.

Blaming falling wages on Obama? Hmmm. Unions used to provide bargaining power that improved wages and conditions for workers. The power decline of Unions began during the 80’s, oddly in sync with the rise of the ideas of Reaganomics. Unions are now effectively neutered.

Obama lacks the skills of compromise that Reagan had? Was Reagan trying to compromise with Congressmen who have absolutely no interest in compromise?

Reagan gets a pass for spending because of the Cold War? But Obama gets no pass because of spending on Wars he did not start and spending on the “War on Terror”?

Decreasing taxes on the rich will lead to innovation? Innovation such as that in the financial industries that lead to the WORST economic crisis since the Great Depression? The wealthiest seem have found ways to effectively have pretty low taxes for some time now. Where is all the innovation that should have lifted our economy?

Of course not everyone who is wealthy is interested in acquiring wealth for its own sake. But clearly many are without regard for whether it will produce anything of value other than more money for them. To such persons, it seems, that innovation is only important if it creates more money for them. It does not seem to be a problem for them that the risks they take are shared by the lower classes.

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As a fabrication of our own consciousness, our assignations of meaning are no less “real”, but since humans and the fabrications of our consciousness are routinely fraught with error, it makes sense, to me, to, sometimes, question such fabrications.

Blaming falling wages on Obama? Hmmm. Unions used to provide bargaining power that improved wages and conditions for workers. The power decline of Unions began during the 80’s, oddly in sync with the rise of the ideas of Reaganomics. Unions are now effectively neutered.

Obama lacks the skills of compromise that Reagan had? Was Reagan trying to compromise with Congressmen who have absolutely no interest in compromise?

Reagan gets a pass for spending because of the Cold War? But Obama gets no pass because of spending on Wars he did not start and spending on the “War on Terror”?

Decreasing taxes on the rich will lead to innovation? Innovation such as that in the financial industries that lead to the WORST economic crisis since the Great Depression? The wealthiest seem have found ways to effectively have pretty low taxes for some time now. Where is all the innovation that should have lifted our economy?

Of course not everyone who is wealthy is interested in acquiring wealth for its own sake. But clearly many are without regard for whether it will produce anything of value other than more money for them. To such persons, it seems, that innovation is only important if it creates more money for them. It does not seem to be a problem for them that the risks they take are shared by the lower classes.

You’re not going to win against conservatives like Bryan. They truly live in some kind of alternate universe with a worldview that is warped, where words literally have different meanings, AND where they have a constant propaganda machine aimed at rewriting history and even current events in order to push their worldview on others. Luckily reality is liberal, extremely liberal, and the world is moving in the correct direction overall. And one of the funniest, or worst, hypocrisies in their worldview is that they’re religious and claim to believe in Jesus, THE most famous liberal socialist of them all!

Perhaps so. e.g., There is, now, a Jesuit Priest, who has become Pope, who is, at least, guiding the Catholic Church back to a more Jesus-like perspective on social issues.

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As a fabrication of our own consciousness, our assignations of meaning are no less “real”, but since humans and the fabrications of our consciousness are routinely fraught with error, it makes sense, to me, to, sometimes, question such fabrications.

Blaming falling wages on Obama? Hmmm. Unions used to provide bargaining power that improved wages and conditions for workers. The power decline of Unions began during the 80’s, oddly in sync with the rise of the ideas of Reaganomics. Unions are now effectively neutered.

Obama lacks the skills of compromise that Reagan had? Was Reagan trying to compromise with Congressmen who have absolutely no interest in compromise?

Reagan gets a pass for spending because of the Cold War? But Obama gets no pass because of spending on Wars he did not start and spending on the “War on Terror”?

Decreasing taxes on the rich will lead to innovation? Innovation such as that in the financial industries that lead to the WORST economic crisis since the Great Depression? The wealthiest seem have found ways to effectively have pretty low taxes for some time now. Where is all the innovation that should have lifted our economy?

Of course not everyone who is wealthy is interested in acquiring wealth for its own sake. But clearly many are without regard for whether it will produce anything of value other than more money for them. To such persons, it seems, that innovation is only important if it creates more money for them. It does not seem to be a problem for them that the risks they take are shared by the lower classes.

You’re not going to win against conservatives like Bryan. They truly live in some kind of alternate universe with a worldview that is warped, where words literally have different meanings, AND where they have a constant propaganda machine aimed at rewriting history and even current events in order to push their worldview on others. Luckily reality is liberal, extremely liberal, and the world is moving in the correct direction overall. And one of the funniest, or worst, hypocrisies in their worldview is that they’re religious and claim to believe in Jesus, THE most famous liberal socialist of them all!

Yes, and Bryan isn’t your run-of-the-mill conservative. I put him on ignore years ago because he justifies all manner of absurdities, to the point that the central organizing feature of his philosophy is that he’s always right. That applies to quite a few of today’s “conservatives,” who have been trained, after all, that believing things on faith (if you believe it, then it’s true) is a virtue; but Bryan does it with such thick-headedness that I’m surprised to see anyone here taking him seriously, even to the point of trying to have a discussion with him. I’d like to think that people grow over time but while I haven’t exchanged a word with him in roughly six years, he doesn’t appear to have changed one bit in that time, either in style or in content, such as it is.

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I cannot in good conscience support CFI under the current leadership. I am here in dissent and in support of a Humanism that honors and respects everyone.

Umm this conversation seems to be turning into a insulting contest rather than an intellectual exchange.

With all due respect to everyone, please seriously study economics before having a conversation..
We can start with the works of Prof. Jeffery Sachs.

At the end of the day, we all want a world with no poverty so let us all study (and not appeal to anecdotal evidence or the news) to find a solution.
There were a few interesting articles cited, but the news is not generally a scholarly source.

I found this website of Prof. Jeffery Sachs a few days ago. Its a good place for us to start our conversation. http://jeffsachs.org/

Abdul, The 1st article by Sachs is encouraging as it indicates a strong trend on the global scale, in decreasing severe economic inequalities. The theme of this article, I think, is represented by this quote from the article:

” ...anti-market sentiment is no friend of poverty reduction. But neither is free-market fundamentalism. Economic growth and poverty reduction can’t be achieved by free markets alone. Disease control, public education, the promotion of new science and technology, and protection of the natural environment are public functions that must align with private market forces.”

That statement, IMO, is in line with the thinking of most US progressives. It is not in line with the dogma of right wing market fundamentalists in the US, who seem to believe that Government is pretty much useless or an impediment to our society’s progress and well-being (except for wars and national “defense”). And taxes for any other purposes, seems to be an anathema to them.

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As a fabrication of our own consciousness, our assignations of meaning are no less “real”, but since humans and the fabrications of our consciousness are routinely fraught with error, it makes sense, to me, to, sometimes, question such fabrications.

Umm this conversation seems to be turning into a insulting contest rather than an intellectual exchange.

That’s because there are ideological differences being discussed. Get in the discussion before you just come in and start trying to play referee.

With all due respect to everyone, please seriously study economics before having a conversation..
We can start with the works of Prof. Jeffery Sachs.

Why him? You get to pick the “economist” we are all supposed to immediately start centering our discussion around.

At the end of the day, we all want a world with no poverty so let us all study (and not appeal to anecdotal evidence or the news) to find a solution.

What anecdotal evidence? Cite something that I or someone else posted above as anecdotal evidence.
But most importantly let’s examine your statement:at the end of the day, we all want a world with no poverty
How do you know that? Because it appears that there are plenty of people who don’t mind a world with poverty!
Don’t take that as rhetorical either….I mean it empirically! Empirically!!

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Row row row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily Merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream!

Abdul, I assume that you are Muslim? I wonder whether the Quranic prohibition against money being made by charging interests on loans, may be a good one, as it requires an Islamic financial institution to basically form an investment partnership with those who borrow or invest in order to make money.

As a fabrication of our own consciousness, our assignations of meaning are no less “real”, but since humans and the fabrications of our consciousness are routinely fraught with error, it makes sense, to me, to, sometimes, question such fabrications.

Obamanomics is better than Reaganomics even if wages are stagnant under the former because ... I dunno, because Republicans are to blame for whatever economic indicators might suggest Obamanomic isn’t working so well?

“I think it’s important to realize how badly policy failed and continues to fail. Right now, Washington seems divided between Republicans who denounce any kind of government action — who insist that all the policies and programs that mitigated the crisis actually made it worse — and Obama loyalists who insist that they did a great job because the world didn’t totally melt down.”

Unions used to provide bargaining power that improved wages and conditions for workers. The power decline of Unions began during the 80’s, oddly in sync with the rise of the ideas of Reaganomics. Unions are now effectively neutered.

Obama lacks the skills of compromise that Reagan had? Was Reagan trying to compromise with Congressmen who have absolutely no interest in compromise?

Obama hasn’t attempted compromise from the beginning. When he first met with Republicans after his election, his initial conciliatory gesture was to declare “I won.”

That’ll probably have to be it for supporting URLs. I have to be mindful of the site’s aggressive spam filter.

Reagan gets a pass for spending because of the Cold War? But Obama gets no pass because of spending on Wars he did not start and spending on the “War on Terror”?

I think perhaps you misinterpreted what I wrote. I don’t give a pass to Reagan for Cold War spending. I’m pointing out in the context of the policies he advocated it was one of the few budgetary increases he favored. So when you blame higher spending on Reagan you have to take the actions of the Democrat-controlled Congress into account. If Reagan got what he wanted then spending would have increased less than it did but it would have tilted toward defense spending. Likewise, it’s appropriate to consider Obama’s amazing deficit reduction in the context of a stingy Republican-controlled Congress.

Decreasing taxes on the rich will lead to innovation? Innovation such as that in the financial industries that lead to the WORST economic crisis since the Great Depression?

Are you seriously trotting out the argument that the financial crisis cancels out any technological innovation that occurs as a result of tax cuts? Is that a cheesy diversion or what?

The wealthiest seem have found ways to effectively have pretty low taxes for some time now. Where is all the innovation that should have lifted our economy?

It’s largely suppressed by uncertainty. The government has reformed financial markets (the administration is still writing the reams of regulations associated with Dodd-Frank), the health care market (more regs, along with the administrations uneven application of the law it helped pass), and has increased taxes while indicating a strong desire to increase taxes more.

Of course not everyone who is wealthy is interested in acquiring wealth for its own sake. But clearly many are without regard for whether it will produce anything of value other than more money for them. To such persons, it seems, that innovation is only important if it creates more money for them. It does not seem to be a problem for them that the risks they take are shared by the lower classes.

Even if a person only innovates to create money for themselves, the natural action of the market tends to reward innovation that people want. So suppose some selfish person figures out a way to cure colon cancer more effectively. Do they deserve the same reward for their innovation that the unselfish innovator deserves?

Yes, and Bryan isn’t your run-of-the-mill conservative. I put him on ignore years ago because he justifies all manner of absurdities, to the point that the central organizing feature of his philosophy is that he’s always right. That applies to quite a few of today’s “conservatives,” who have been trained, after all, that believing things on faith (if you believe it, then it’s true) is a virtue; but Bryan does it with such thick-headedness that I’m surprised to see anyone here taking him seriously, even to the point of trying to have a discussion with him. I’d like to think that people grow over time but while I haven’t exchanged a word with him in roughly six years, he doesn’t appear to have changed one bit in that time, either in style or in content, such as it is.

Paul LaClair wouldn’t be quite so off-topic if he had provided one example in this thread where I justify an absurdity.

It’s not really anything other than an irrelevant personal attack, is it?